Trillion - Winter Renshaw Page 0,89
nods, and we both remain planted where we are, as if I’m waiting for him to speak or he’s waiting for me to have a change or heart.
“I’m sorry …” I point to my hotel—a rookie move given the fact that he’s still just a nameless stranger looking to get a piece. “I’m going to head in … alone.”
“I know. You made it abundantly clear that you don’t sleep with strangers.” He laughs through his perfect, Greek God nose. “Maybe next time we meet, we won’t be strangers.”
I smile, amused.
And then I head inside, opting not to share with him the statistical odds of the two of us ever running into one another again.
CHAPTER TWO
Cainan
One Month Later …
Beep … beep … beep … beep …
I wake to a steady sound, slamming into an unfamiliar shell of a body, which as it turns out is mine. A dreamlike haze envelopes me, and when my surroundings come into focus, I’m met with white walls, white blankets, white machines connected to white wires leading to a strip of white tape on my wrist holding an IV in place.
I’m in a hospital.
I try to remember how I got here, but it’s like trying to recall someone else’s dream—an impossible task. And it only makes the throbbing inside my head intensify.
“My wife …” My words are more air than sound, and it’s painful to speak with a bone-dry mouth and burning throat.
“Mr. James?” A woman with hair the color of driven snow leans over me. So much fucking white. “Don’t move. Please.”
She’s a calm kind of rushed, hurried but not frenetic as she makes her way around the room, pressing buttons, paging for assistance and adjusting machine settings.
The room fades in and out, murky gray to pitch black, and then crystal clear before disappearing completely. The next time I open my eyes, I’m fenced by three more women and one white-coat-wearing man, all of them gazing down on me with squinted, skeptical expressions, as if they’re witnessing a verifiable miracle in the making.
I’m certain this is nothing more than a bad dream—until my head pulsates with an iron-clad throb once again, accented by a searing poker-hot pain too real to be a delusion.
“Mr. James, I’m Dr. Shapiro. Four weeks ago, you were involved in a car accident.” The doctor at the foot of the bed studies me. “You’re at Hoboken University Medical Center, and you’re in excellent hands.”
They all study me.
I try to sit up, only for a nurse to place her hand on my shoulder. “Take it easy, Mr. James.”
Another nurse hands me water. I take a sip. The clear, cold liquid that glides down my throat both soothes and stings. I swallow the razor-blade sensation and try to sit up again, but my arms shake in protest, muscles threatening to give out.
“Where’s my wife?” Each word is excruciating, physically and otherwise.
She should be here.
Why isn’t she here?
“Your wife?” The nurse with the water cup repeats my question as she exchanges glances with the dark-haired nurse on the opposite side of my bed. “Mr. James … you don’t have a wife.”
I try to respond, which only causes me to cough. I’m handed the water once more, and when I get the coughing under control, I ask for my wife once more.
“Has anyone called her?” I hand the cup back. If I’ve been out of it for weeks, I imagine she’s beside herself. And our kids. I can’t begin to imagine what they’ve been going through. “Does she know I’m awake? Have my children seen me like this?”
“Sir …” The nurse with the dark hair frowns.
“My wife,” I say, harder this time.
“Mr. James.” Dr. Shapiro comes closer, and a nurse steps out of the way. “You suffered extensive injuries in your accident …”
The man rambles on, but I only catch fragments of what he’s saying. Shattered pelvis. Spleen removal. Internal bleeding. Brain swelling. Medically-induced coma.
“It’s not uncommon to be confused or disoriented upon awaking,” he says.
But she was just here …
She was just with me …
Only we weren’t in this room, we were at the beach—the little strip of sand beyond our summer home. She was in my arms as we lay warm under a hot sun, watching our children run from the rolling waves that rolled over the coastline, leaving tiny footprints up and down the shore.
A boy and a girl.
My wife smelled of sunscreen, and she wore an oversized straw hat with a black ribbon and thick-framed cat-eye sunglasses with red rims that